Scripture

But Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering I am about to drink? Are you able to be baptized with the baptism of suffering I must be baptized with?”

~Mark 10:38, NLT

Quote

I do not want to be Jesus; I want to be like Him. I want His attitude but not His position.

~Ya’akov

Billy Graham said, “The Bible has a single, clear, bold message for every living being–the message of Christ and His offer of peace with God.” I agree with Dr. Graham wholeheartedly. I admire Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, but I do not envy Jesus. I can’t handle my own sin and shame, let alone that of the world. I do want to be like Him. I do want to know Him and the power of His resurrection. I want His character and His mindset. I want to see people as He sees people, but I do not want His crown. I do not want to be the KING of kings. I do not want the entire world looking to me for hope and salvation. I am perfectly happy with God’s redemptive plan: Jesus is the Savior and I am the saved. He is LORD and I am His slave. He makes all the hard calls and all I need do is obey Him.

Lucifer, alias Satan was an arch angel or so we believe but he was not satisfied with his lot–He wanted to be God. He wanted to be the center of heaven. He wanted the praise that Jesus was getting. He wanted everything to revolve around himself. He found out the hard way that he could not be God and that he had no power to take God’s throne so when God created man, Satan tempted Adam and Eve to follow his wicked example and try to be God. Bottom line: we want to be like Christ but we do not want to be Christ Himself.

Let me tell you one way {there are many} to distinguish a cult from true Christianity. A cult always glorifies a human leader who has made himself god so to speak. When you hang out with the cult members, you will here a constant chatter about their pastor or spiritual leader. They will talk incessantly about him and say very little if anything about Jesus. They become obsessed with their human leader and invariably put him on a pedestal. When leader’s encourage and allow this to happen; it is because he/she wants to be God.

Why do I confess so much sin publicly? Probably more than one reason but the main reason is: I do not want to be God. No one will be tempted to worship a man that battles road rage and struggles with self-control. Am I right or what? Cornelius fell at Peters feet in worship. I heard and old preacher put this experience in his own words, it went like this: {Peter} “Get up man, don’t worship me, I am just a man. You will get us both in trouble: you for worshipping me and me for allowing it.”

Extra

This weather is something: I wore a T-shirt to the ball game last night and I never got cold. It was 67 after the sun went down. Joe Wheeler will not like it but we can go without running the unit at all in this weather.

By the way, Brewer got beat last night in the same fashion as Danville, they were getting clobbered and the officials were not calling anything. The officials did better in the second half but it was too late.

I hope you have a good day and thanks for reading the blog.